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Summer’s here and it’s blockbuster season at the cineplex again. With a glut of big-budget, low-plot celluloid, an argument can be made that it’s the perfect time to avoid a Hollywood production. Me? I look forward to that magical weekend in April or May when the first mega-hit hopeful kicks off the weekly chain of movies that doesn’t let up until Labor Day.

Movie tickets are worth their weight in RAM nowadays. Once, the day after treating my wife to one of Hollywood’s finest, I made the mistake of opening my wallet. In the distance I heard a coyote howl and a small, lint tumbleweed blew out from between my credit cards. Now that the Juneau monopoly charges $8.75 for a regular showing and something only barely vale la pena for the matinees, you have to be prequalified for a loan before offering your date some popcorn and a soda. It’s quite understandable how many people look to the critics’ reviews before shelling out for a movie these days, but I don’t have to work very hard to justify trips to the theater. There are so many angles from which I can enjoy a movie that I rarely ever leave feeling like I threw my money away. (Cough-Battlefield Earth-Cough)

The Internet needs another amateur movie review site like I need another half-finished project, nonetheless I feel it’s my duty to share my opinion digitally. Figuring out how just how to do that is the hard part. Should I use my thumb or a varying number of symbols representing celestial bodies? Can I get my point across with another symbolic smashed fruit, or do you think I should fall back on the traditional A-through-F grading scale? I know! I could be the first person to come up with an incredibly detailed, 947-point scoring system that uses a matrix of variables such as “believability of visual effects,” “aspect ratio of lens utilized,” “supporting actors’ conviction,” and “applicability of songs licensed for the soundtrack,” to arrive at a precise percentage point designation for each movie. Has that been done already? Sounds like too much work, anyway. Nevermind.

Pre-millenium, I used to write some one-line movie reviews for the Whalesong, the student newspaper at UAS. Despite the lack of fame and fortune associated with my byline, I enjoyed doing it because it was fun and challenging, yet an eminently non-time consuming commitment. If I’m going to try to write a movie review for each movie I scrutinize, that’s the route I want to go. Especially if I can eliminate the “challenging” part.

Some of my friends’ movie opinions have made it painfully obvious that not everyone uses the same criteria to judge a film. That’s reasonable. I can appreciate that not everyone thinks that a movie full of fancy special effects is worth seeing. I don’t want to be responsible for someone spending their children’s college money on a movie they hate, so you’ll understand why I’m not terribly keen on giving recommendations. I think, instead, I’d rather write about what in a movie was worthwhile for me. So, if fashion is your thing and I write something like, “Boy, I sure did like the costume design in Shrek 2!” well, you’d better just whip out that debit card and get your butt to the theater.

I hereby deem that it will also be interesting if I arrange the summer movies in a best-to-worst fashion.